Obama hits McCain on the economy
Posted: Monday, September 15, 2008 4:27 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Economy
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. -- Obama argued here today that McCain's earlier statement that the fundamentals of the economy are strong shows that the GOP presidential nominee is out of touch with voters' economic concerns.
Obama, in fact, said that voters must ask themselves whether they can afford to vote for McCain. “He doesn’t get what’s happening between the mountain in Sedona where he lives and the corridors of power where he works,” he said. “Think about this: We just woke up to news of financial disaster and this morning he said that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong. Sen. McCain, what economy are you talking about?”
Saying change was not just a slogan, Obama bashed McCain for hiring lobbyists to run his campaign while at the same time promising to change Washington. He quipped that if you believed those lobbyists were working for the Arizona senator only to put themselves out of business “I’ve got a bridge to sell you up in Alaska.”
The McCain campaign responded in an email. “Barack Obama voted to fund the infamous ‘Bridge To No Where’, and if it weren’t for John McCain, Gov. Palin and other reform-minded public officials, it would’ve been built," said spokesman Tucker Bounds. "Barack Obama’s chatty witticisms are great, but his non-existent record of bipartisan reform isn’t -- which is why he isn’t ready to deliver the change America needs.” (The McCain campaign here is citing Obama's vote for the federal highway bill, which included the earmark for the bridge. Almost every senator but McCain voted for that legislation. And Palin supported the bridge during her 2006 gubernatorial bid.)
As in recent days, Obama made more of an effort to draw point-by-point contrasts with McCain on issues from tax and economic policy to energy, education, and foreign policy -- as he sought to define for the audience the kind of change he would bring to Washington if elected. He continued with a theme that emerged in the weeks leading up to the Denver convention, telling the crowd of nearly 6,000 gathered here in an orchard that he would look out for hardworking families, a focus on kitchen-table issues he hopes will help him turn this red state blue in the fall.
“On just about every economic issue, there is not a dime’s worth of difference between John McCain’s proposals and what we have right now. In 19 months, he has not named one thing he would do differently from this administration on the central issue of this election. Not one thing,” Obama said. “So when you walk into that voting booth in 50 days, ask yourself: Can your family afford to take a chance on an economic policy that offers $200 billion in tax breaks to the biggest corporations, including the oil companies, but not one penny of relief to more than 100 million Americans? Because that’s what Sen. McCain is offering.”
Obama went on to list a string of other issues -- including making college more affordable and protecting Social Security -- where McCain would be wrong for middle- and working-class voters.
“Can you afford to take a chance on someone who’s voted against the minimum wage 19 times? When it was $4, he was against it; when it was $5, he was against it; when it was $6, he was against it,” he said. “That’s his record. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
As he often does lately, Obama closed by insisting that the election was too important to be about minor non-issues. “We’ve seen [Republicans] turn an entire campaign into a debate about swift boats and windsurfing. And what do you get when it’s over? Iraq and Katrina and a meltdown on Wall Street. And millions without jobs or homes or health care. Pain at the pump. Enough,” he said. “We can’t afford to let them make another big election about small things.”
